What do a former NFL wide receiver, a volleyball All-American, a record-breaking NCAA wrestler, a retired Cal Poly trainer and the former chairman of the Cal Poly Foundation Investment Committee have in common?
They’re all members of this year’s Cal Poly Athletics Hall of Fame class.
Jimmy Childs, Ellen Bugalski-Ferreira and Scott Heaton – distinguished athletes from Cal Poly’s past – are being joined by trainer Steve Yoneda and donor Richard Andrews.
They’ll join 92 individuals, a track and field foursome and the 1960 football team (whose plane crash killed 16 players, the team manager and a booster).
This year’s class, detailed here, will be inducted during a dinner at Embassy Suites at 6 p.m. Friday. Public recognition will follow during a ceremony at halftime of the Cal Poly football team’s game Saturday against Idaho State at Alex G. Spanos Stadium.
Richard Andrews
Andrews served on a number of committees and boards in support of Cal Poly athletics and has been a lifetime member of the alumni association since he graduated from Cal Poly in 1956.
He most recently served as chairman of the Alex G. Spanos Stadium Renovation Project and used his skills as a retired investments broker to Cal Poly’s aid, serving as chairman of the now-defunct Cal Poly Foundation Investment Committee before it was replaced by the Cal Poly Corporation.
Andrews has a long personal history with the university going back to the days when the student body was 3,200 students, all male. He left Cal Poly after receiving his degree in social sciences but returned in 1969 to serve on the alumni association board of directors.
“The campus has certainly changed in the time since I was here,” he said. “All for the better, I might add.”
Ellen Bugalski-Ferreira
As a middle blocker for the Mustangs from 1982 to 1985, Bugalski-Ferreira twice earned All-American honors and went on to play in the short-lived Major Professional Volleyball League.
She still holds the Cal Poly career aces per game record, at .665.
She said that some of her best friends were, and still are, her former teammates – some of whom still get together on a regular basis.
Bugalski-Ferreira coached at the collegiate level for 12 years before deciding to spend more time with her children. She now teaches primary physical education.
She looks back at her early athletic career with a unique appreciation for the era.
“I played in the days when there were no NCAA rules for how much you could practice or how much you could coach,” she said. “We were so absolutely happy to be given the opportunity to receive money and for our parents to not have to pay for us. So we were indebted to the school and to the coaching staff.”
Jimmy Childs
Childs left Cal Poly after four years as a Mustangs wide receiver when he was selected by the St. Louis Cardinals in the fourth round of 1978’s NFL Draft.
In his time at Cal Poly, he caught 84 passes for 1,449 yards and was twice an all-conference selection. He went on to play two seasons with the Cardinals. In that time he returned four kickoffs for a 19.3-yard average and caught 12 passes for 143 yards and a touchdown.
“I do miss the game,” he said. “You’ve been playing all your life and all of the sudden, that’s it. It’s over. You can’t suit up again.”
Childs’ time with the Cardinals was the chance he had dreamt of since he started playing football at age 9, and he carries fond memories of his time in the spotlight, from standing in awe at his first game in Texas Stadium to just sharing the field with his idols.
Childs said he’ll be thrilled to see his old teammates and the Cal Poly campus after so many years.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing some of the guys,” he said. “They’ve been trying to get me up there for years and I haven’t been able to make it.”
Scott Heaton
Heaton lived on the Cal Poly campus well before his years as a student.
When he was a teen, his parents served as dorm caretakers while his father worked toward a master’s degree.
During his time as a student, Heaton was a champion wrestler, ranking first in the nation his senior year (1979-80) at 167 pounds. Heaton was 20-0 in dual meets in 1980, and still owns school records for most dual meet falls (12) in a season, most career dual wins (82), best career dual winning percentage (.878) and most overall career wins (136) and pins (55).
While Heaton credits his father for getting him into wrestling, it was his mother, a physical therapist, who led him to his present career helping chronic pain sufferers.
“It’s tremendous work,” he said. “It’s very gratifying to know that you can take people out of pain, that you can give people that are in chronic pain some relief, even if it’s temporary. Some of it you can eliminate but some of these people that are in pain 24/7, if you just give them a couple of hours, it’s huge for them.”
Steve Yoneda
After 32 years as an athletics trainer at Cal Poly, Yoneda retired in 2002.
He graduated from Cal Poly in 1970, when he began overseeing the sports medicine program alone until he hired Kristal Slover in 1993.
Many athletes, including fellow inductees Childs and Heaton, remember him fondly.
“I had a third-degree separation of my shoulder my junior year,” Heaton recalled. “He was instrumental in helping me come back. The taping methods he used were extremely valuable. There was basically nothing else holding my shoulder together.”
Yoneda, a member of the Hall of Fame’s selection committee, remains humble about his place in the school’s history.
“For quite a number of years, my whole feeling has been that there are still a lot of athletes who need to be recognized,” Yoneda said. “There are still quite a few out there that are really deserving of the honor, and I’m going to do my best to get those people in.”
Yoneda’s former student trainers have gone on to work at other colleges as well as for NFL and Major League Baseball teams.
He saw teams win 30 national championships during his tenure at Cal Poly and witnessed firsthand the school’s evolution from a Division II powerhouse to a Division I newcomer in 1994.
“When I first started here, all the schools we’re playing now were in the same conference,” Yoneda said. “They moved up, and 25 years later we moved up. So it was déj… vu.”